The Western powers are facing a dilemma at the United Nations Security Council over Iran’s nuclear activities. Because Russia and China hold veto power, the Security Council is unlikely to back sanctions against Iran that are strong enough to be effective, and the sanctions that it is prepared to back are unlikely to be strong enough to be effective.

A resolution currently being drafted by the Americans, the British and the French – the other three veto-yielding Council members – is expected to be debated next month, but there is little prospect of Russia or China dropping their opposition to sanctions that target Iran’s civilian economy.

Iran says that its nuclear activities – including uranium enrichment – are purely peaceful, an account that is disputed by the West. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog in Vienna, also has its doubts, heightened by the discovery last September of a second, clandestine enrichment facility in Iran.

The allies are now prisoners of their own rhetoric. US President Barack Obama offered to re-engage with the regime in Tehran a year ago, an offer that remains open even after Iran rebuffed it. At the same time, the US administration, backed by the allies, pursued a second track, threatening “crippling sanctions” unless Tehran returned to multilateral talks on its nuclear programme.

‘Crippling sanctions’

On 1 October, Javier Solana, the then EU foreign policy chief, met Iran’s top negotiator in Geneva in the presence of the political directors of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany – the countries that negotiate with the Iranians on behalf of the international community. A tentative deal was reached, but to this day the Iranians have refused to endorse any implementing provisions. The “crippling sanctions” are therefore back on the table – except that nobody, not even the US administration, wants them to be crippling.

Since 2006 the Security Council has passed three resolutions on Iran, targeting trade in items that could be used in a nuclear weapons programme, banning the country from selling weapons abroad, and restricting foreign business with some of its banks (see box). These measures may have slowed Iran’s progress on enriching uranium, and Rouzbeh Parsi, an Iran expert at the Institute for Security Studies, a Paris-based EU agency, considers that they were effective as far as sanctions go, although enforcement could be tightened. But the underlying problem, according to Parsi, is that sanctions are inherently limited in their effects. Others are ready to put the same point more bluntly. “Short of an invasion” – which has no support in the US or Europe – “there is not much anyone can do about Iran’s uranium programme,” said one source. The West now wants to test that proposition.

Muted sanction support

China and Russia appear open to the idea of expanding the current UN sanctions, to include additional banks and to add Iranian officials to a list of regime figures who cannot travel abroad. But this is not enough for the West, where the talk is of tougher sanctions being imposed autonomously by the US and the EU, without the UN’s endorsement. France and Germany, despite strong business links with Iran, now accept this idea, according to diplomats – on condition that all mechanisms to obtain UN backing are exhausted. The diplomatic focus is now firmly on the Security Council. The British are exploring a ban on investments in Iran’s energy sector, although Russia and China are unlikely to back this.

Targeted sanctions

In the US, both Houses of Congress have drafted their own versions of an Iran sanctions bill that would target Iran’s energy sector. But the Obama administration is not keen on disrupting energy supplies to Iran, for fear of alienating the country’s population (Iran, an exporter of crude oil, does not have sufficient refining capacity to meet domestic demand for fuel, although the US Energy Information Administration expects this to change by 2013). US officials also fear that severe sanctions could drive a wedge between the allies just when unity is needed.

Fact File

Existing sanction

UN Security Council resolutions 1737, 1747 and 1803, adopted in 2006-08, require Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium and prohibit the transfer of most nuclear and missile technology to the country. They also prohibit Iranian arms exports, freeze the assets of 40 persons and entities, and ban five individuals from travelling abroad. Both the EU and the US have travel-bans and asset-freezes in place that go beyond the UN’s measures. The US has had a trade and investment ban with Iran in place since 1995, although some of its provisions have subsequently been eased. Embargo on monitoring equipment? The US Congress is increasingly interested in imposing sanctions on firms that supply Iran with the monitoring technology that helps the regime crack down on opponents. A joint venture between Nokia of Finland and Siemens of Germany is reported to have sold such technology to Iran in 2008. The issue has also raised concerns in the EU. On Monday (22 March), the Union’s foreign ministers called on Tehran to “stop the jamming of satellite broadcasting and internet censorship and to put an end to this electronic interference immediately”. Their statement said: “The EU is determined to pursue these issues and to act with a view to putting an end to this unacceptable situation.” Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, added that any measures needed further consultations.

Short of an invasion…there is not much anyone can do about Iran’s uranium programme

The broad European view is that any sanctions that would make life more difficult for ordinary Iranians are bound to increase the regime’s domestic legitimacy, which suffered badly following a rigged presidential election last June. Nevertheless, planners in the secretariat-general of the Council of Ministers have been drafting options over recent months.

The decision is, in the end, political, not technical. The West has three goals: to preserve unity on Iran; to impede Iran’s nuclear programme (or even to persuade the government to abandon it); and to avoid crippling sanctions. But even in the best case, it can have only two out of the three goals.